FreeBSD 9.3, the latest update to the project's legacy branch, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release of the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: the zfs(8) filesystem has been updated to support the bookmarks feature; the uname(1) utility has been updated to include the -U and -K flags, which print the FreeBSD_version for the running userland and kernel, respectively; the fetch(3) library has been updated to support SNI, allowing to use virtual hosts on HTTPS; several updates to gcc(1) have been imported from Google." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,718MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (1,581MB, SHA256).

FreeBSD is a UNIX-like operating system for the i386, amd64, IA-64, arm, MIPS, powerpc, ppc64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's "4.4BSD-Lite" release, with some "4.4BSD-Lite2" enhancements. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's "Net/2" to the i386, known as "386BSD", though very little of the 386BSD code remains. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. FreeBSD comes with over 20,000 packages (pre-compiled software that is bundled for easy installation), covering a wide range of areas: from server software, databases and web servers, to desktop software, games, web browsers and business software - all free and easy to install.

FreeBSD 10.1 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/10 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: the new console driver, vt(4), has been added; support for FreeBSD/i386 guests has been added to bhyve(4); the bhyve(4) hypervisor now supports booting from a zfs(8) file system; support for SMP was added to the armv6 kernels and enabled by default in the configuration files for all platforms that contain multi-core CPUs; initial support for UEFI boot has been added for the FreeBSD/amd64 architecture...." See the release announcement and the release notes for a full list of changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,465MB, SHA256, pkglist), FreeBSD-10.1-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,261MB, SHA256).

Contrary to expectation, Glen Barber today announced the availability of the fourth release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1: "The fourth RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. This is anticipated to be the final RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE cycle. Some of the changes between 10.1-RC3 and 10.1-RC4 include: fix ATA CF ERASE breakage for certain CF cards; fix a race in pmap_emulate_accessed_dirty() that could trigger a EPT misconfiguration VM-exit. Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-RC4 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures. The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats. The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20 GB sparse image." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC4-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,463MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC4-i386-dvd1.iso (2,260MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third and final release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1: "The third RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Some of the changes between 10.1-RC2 and 10.1-RC3 include: several fixes to the UDPLite protocol implementation; the vt(4) driver has been updated to save and restore keyboard mode and LED states when switching windows; several fixes to the SCTP protocol implementation; a potential race condition in obtaining a file pointer has been corrected; fix ZFS ZVOL deadlock and rename issues; restore libopie.so ABI compatibility with 10.0-RELEASE; removed the last vestige of MD5 password hashes; several rc(8) script updates and fixes...." Read the release announcement for further information. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,467MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (2,299MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1: "The second RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Some of the changes between 10.1-RC1 and 10.1-RC2 include: fix XHCI driver for devices which have more than 15 physical root HUB ports; fix old iSCSI initiator to work with new CAM locking; fix page length reported for Block Limits VPD page; add QCOW v1 & v2 support to mkimg(1). Note to consumers of the i386 DVD installer: as result of a package build failure, the X.Org-related ports (including GNOME 2) are not available on the 10.1-RC2 i386 DVD. This will not be an issue for the 10.1-RC3 DVD, nor the 10.1-RELEASE DVD." Continue to the release announcement for more details. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,666MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,068MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1 - with an important note to the users of the ZFS file system: "The first RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Some of the changes between 10.1-BETA3 and 10.1-RC1 include: a bug that would cause all processes to appear to have the parent PID of '1' has been fixed; various updates to bsdinstall(8) and bsdconfig(8); the Hyper-V KVP (key-value pair) driver has been added, and enabled by default on amd64 and i386 architectures. Important note to ZFS users on the i386 architecture: a regression has been discovered that affects multi-disk (mirror, raidz-1, raidz-2) installations that may cause a kernel panic on boot." Read the full release announcement for further details. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,665MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (1,507MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third beta of FreeBSD 10.1: "The third beta build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between 10.1-BETA2 and 10.1-BETA3 include: support for serial and null console has been added to the UEFI boot loader; a potential panic triggered by referencing a device that has been renamed has been fixed in the cam(4) subsystem; OpenPAM has been updated to the Ourouparia (20140912) release; new sysctls have been added to vt(4) to enable or disable potentially dangerous key combinations (such as reboot, halt, and break to debugger); the mkimg(1) utility has been updated to allow creating empty partition entries...." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-BETA3-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,666MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-BETA3-i386-dvd1.iso (1,509MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second beta build of FreeBSD 10.1: "The second beta build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between 10.1-BETA1 and 10.1-BETA2 include: UEFI-capable memory stick images and CDROM/DVDROM images are now build by default for the 10.1-RELEASE cycle; the gssapi_krb5 library is now included in the gssapi(3) build; the default motd(5) text has been changed to clarify the included information and including references to additional resources; a potential crash in ctld(8) has been fixed when a getaddrinfo(3) call fails; fix Denial of Service in TCP packet processing; support for Promise TX8660 8-port 3Gbps HBA has been added...." Continue to the release announcement for a detailed list of changes and other information. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,666MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,509MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the initial beta release of FreeBSD 10.1: "The first beta build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes page. Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-BETA1 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures. The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats. The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20 GB sparse image. Note to consumers of the dvd1.iso image: the packages included on the DVD do not have a corresponding pkg(8) repository due to an incompatibility with pkg-1.2.x and pkg-1.3.x. This will be fixed for BETA2." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,665MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (1,508MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third (and likely last) release candidate for FreeBSD 9.3: "The third RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. This is expected to be the final RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE cycle. Changes between 9.3-RC2 and 9.3-RC3 include: bug fix for axge(4) range checks and receive loop header parsing; bug fix to exclude loopback addresses rather than loopback interfaces has been fixed; bug fix in uhso(4) to prevent memory use after free() and mtx_destroy(); bug fix in bsdinstall(8) where certain conditions could prevent directory creation before use; bug fix for DNS-based load balancing; vendor update to oce(4)." Read the complete release announcement for more information. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,716MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (1,581MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 9.3: "The second RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between 9.3-RC1 and 9.3-RC2 include: a bug in the fast rx buffer recycle path has been fixed in the cxgbe(4) driver; a bug that would incorrectly allow two listening SCTP sockets on the same port bound to the wildcard address has been fixed; multiple vulnerabilities have been fixed in file(1) and ibmagic(3); a workaround has been implemented to fix serial ports on certain motherboards, in particular the Intel D2500CCE board; a bug in bsdgrep(1) that would prevent certain pattern matching has been fixed...." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,663MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,526MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 9.3: "The first RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between 9.3-BETA3 and 9.3-RC1 include: various bug fixes in the hptrr(4) driver; time zone data has been updated to tzdata2014e; handling of the '-P' flag without '-p' or '-r' has been fixed in the daemon(8) utility; a bug in the nvme(4) controller initialization path has been fixed; a bug in the fast receive buffer recycle path has been fixed in the cxgbe(4) driver. Note to consumers of the dvd1.iso image: the version of bsdconfig(8) in the releng/9.3 branch does not yet support pkg(7)-format packages. This is planned to be fixed in -RC2." See the release announcement for further details. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,709MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (1,573MB, SHA256).

Another week and another beta release in FreeBSD's legacy branch: "The third BETA build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between 9.3-BETA2 and 9.3-BETA3 include: a new ttys(5) flag, onifconsole, has been added, which activates ttyu0 if the device is an active kernel console; the NFSv4 server now allows creating a hard link to a symbolic link, as was allowed in NFSv3; OpenSSL has been updated to 0.9.8za; a deadlock caused by incorrect reference counts has been fixed in the usb(4) driver; the arc4random(3) library has been updated to match that in FreeBSD-CURRENT; the amount of data collected by hwpmc(4) has been increased to work with modern processors and available RAM...." Here is the full release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-BETA3-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,712MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-BETA3-i386-dvd1.iso (1,576MB, SHA256).

Less than a week after the release of the initial beta, Glen Barber announced the availability of the second beta build of FreeBSD 9.3, the upcoming new version of the project's legacy branch: "The second BETA build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between 9.3-BETA1 and 9.3-BETA2 include: fixes for the following security advisories - FreeBSD-SA-14:08.tcp, FreeBSD-SA-14:11.sendmail, FreeBSD-SA-14:12.ktrace, FreeBSD-SA-14:13.pam, FreeBSD-SA-14:14.openssl; a system crash caused by destroying an if_tap(4) device while in use has been fixed. Note to consumers of the dvd1.iso image: the version of bsdconfig(8) in the stable/9 branch does not yet support pkg(7)-format packages." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,712MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,576MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 9.3, the upcoming new update of the project's legacy branch: "The first beta build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal GNATS PR system or on the -stable mailing list. Please note, as the FreeBSD bug tracking system is undergoing maintenance, the PR system may be unavailable. Problem reports submitted during this maintenance period are being queued for later processing. If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the 'stable/9' branch." Here is the brief release announcement with upgrade information and checksums. Download links: FreeBSD-9.3-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (638MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (581MB, SHA256).

Following a long development process, FreeBSD 10.0, the latest stable version of the popular UNIX-like operating system, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE. This is the first release of the stable/10 branch. Some of the highlights: GCC is no longer installed by default on architectures where clang(1) is the default compiler; unbound has been imported to the base system as the local caching DNS resolver; BIND has been removed from the base system; make(1) has been replaced with NetBSD's bmake(1); pkg(7) is now the default package management utility; pkg_add(1), pkg_delete(1) and related tools have been removed; major enhancements in virtualization...." See the release announcement and release notes for a detailed list of changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,370MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,210MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the fifth release candidate for FreeBSD 10.0: "The fifth release candidate build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. This is expected to be the final RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE cycle. Changes between -RC4 and -RC5 include: fix an IPv4 multicast regression; fixes OpenSSL for CVE-2013-4353, CVE-2013-6449, CVE-2013-6450; revert a change to the kinfo_file structure to preserve ABI; fix a race condition which could prevent the file descriptor table from being properly updated." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and upgrade information. Download the installation DVD images from here: FreeBSD-10.0-RC5-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,366MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-RC5-i386-dvd1.iso (2,203MB, SHA256).

The long and intensive development cycle of FreeBSD 10.0 continues today with the fourth (and probably last) release candidate: "The fourth RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. This is expected to be the final RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE cycle. Changes between -RC4 and -RC4 include: tighten default restrictions for ntpd(8) server; fix kernel crash discovered with recent Java port update. Important note to freebsd-update(8) users - please be sure to follow the instructions in the following FreeBSD errata notices before upgrading the system to 10.0-RC4." Read Glen Barber's release announcement for more information, upgrade instructions and related links. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-RC4-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,369MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-RC4-i386-dvd1.iso (2,207MB, SHA256). The final release of FreeBSD 10.0 is now expected on 14 January 2014.

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third release candidate for the upcoming FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE: "The third RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -RC2 and -RC3 include: several minor bug fixes and functionality enhancements to bhyve; add new sysctl, kern.supported_archs, containing the list of FreeBSD MACHINE_ARCH values whose binaries this kernel can run; add a pkg(8) repository configuration file for cdrom-based package installation; implement a fix to allow bsdconfig(8) to be able to install packages included on the DVD; fix pkg(8) multi-repository support by properly respecting 'enabled' flag; fix Xen build without INET; several bugfixes to bsdinstall(8); fix a ZFS-related panic triggered by an incorrect assertion...." Here is the full release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,368MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (2,207MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the second release candidate for the upcoming stable release of FreeBSD 10.0: "The second RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Note to those downloading dvd1.iso. While packages are available on dvd1.iso, the version of bsdconfig(8) provided with 10.0-RC2 will not be able to install them by default; this will be fixed for 10.0-RC3. As a workaround for installing packages from the DVD, create a directory to serve as the temporary pkg(8) repository configuration directory, and fetch the configuration file that will be included on the next set of -RC builds." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and a brief list of changes since the 10.0-RC1 release. Download links: FreeBSD-10.0-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,746MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,212MB, SHA256).

The first release candidate for the upcoming stable release of FreeBSD 10.0 is now ready for download and testing: "The first RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -BETA4 and -RC1 include: fix to a regression in bsdinstall(8) that prevents ZFS on GELI installation from working correctly; build Hyper-V kernel modules by default for i386; update oce(4) driver to support 40Gbps devices; improve robustness of the Xen balloon driver; fix accounting for hw.realmem on the i386 and amd64 platforms; fix poweroff(8) on XenServer; fix powerd/states on AMD CPUs; fix PKG_ABI detection in bsdconfig(8) after pkg-1.2; fix emulated jail_v0 byte order...." Continue to the release announcement for a full list of important changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (727MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (589MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the fourth beta release of FreeBSD 10.0: "The fourth BETA build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -BETA3 and -BETA4 include: add preliminary support for RTL8106E, RTL8168G, RTL8168GU, RTL8411B and RTL8168EP; enable fingerprint checking in pkg(8) for FreeBSD-provided binary packages; remove the WITH_LIBICONV_COMPAT build option; update nvi to 2.1.2; various iconv(3) fixes; fix mergemaster -U by forcing FreeBSD 9 compatibility in mtree when mtree is nmtree; fix to freebsd-update(8) in generating the list of old files/directories versus new files/directories." Here is the full release announcement as published on one of the project's mailing lists. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-BETA4-amd64-disc1.iso (727MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-BETA4-i386-disc1.iso (589MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third beta release of FreeBSD 10.0: "The third beta build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -BETA2 and -BETA3 include: several small fixes for the amd64 minidump code; add a 'pkg bootstrap' command which will bootstrap pkg(8) without forwarding any command to it after installation; fix make(1) warning output with 'make delete-old' and 'make delete-old-libs'; add kernel side support for large TLB on BERI/CHERI; add loader.conf(5) entries to import bootpool after boot when using full-disk encryption and ZFS; switch the default mtree to nmtree our new NetBSD derived mtree; remove the (unused) isf(4) driver...." Continue to the release announcement for a full list of major changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-BETA3-amd64-disc1.iso (695MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso (556MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second beta release of FreeBSD 10.0: "The second beta build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -BETA1 and -BETA2 include: fix AHCI ATAPI emulation when backed with /dev/cd0 in virtio; improve XHCI stability; fix 'make delete-old-libs' and 'make check-libs' to delete .debug files; upgrade to the latest version of mtree from NetBSD; enable the automatic creation of a certificate for Sendmail; add support for 'first boot' rc.d scripts; fix jail_parallel_start, ip[46].addr when interface parameter is not defined and a bug which prevented jails from starting when $jail_conf was used and no jail name was specified; disable the Xen userland event channel driver, which is not yet ready...." Here is the full release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-BETA2-amd64-disc1.iso (727MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (588MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 10.0: "The first beta build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Due to the size of the images, the ports.txz distribution is not included in 10.0-BETA1, however is expected to be included with disc1.iso for subsequent builds during the release cycle. Changes between -ALPHA5 and -BETA1 include: introduce freebsd-version(1), which is intended to be used as an auditing tool to determine the userland patch level when it differs from what 'uname -r' reports; improve ZFS lzjb decompress performance; add two new MIPS CPU families - mips24k and mips74k; remove most of the ATF tools and the _atf user...." Continue to the release announcement for a full list of changes and update instructions. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (693MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (555MB, SHA256).

The intensive testing period of the upcoming FreeBSD 10.0 stable release continues today with the just-announced alpha 5 build: "The fifth alpha build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. The 10.0-ALPHA5 builds correlate to svn revision r256092 of the head/ branch. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal GNATS PR system or here on the -current mailing list. Changes between -ALPHA4 and -ALPHA5 include: removal of BIND from the base system; replacements may be found within the Ports collection; bug fix introduced with the latest infiniband update; the GNU ar(1) and ranlib(1) have been removed from the base system; bug fixes and updates to the base LLVM; various bhyve enhancements; various XEN enhancements." Read Glen Barber's release announcement for further information and upgrade notes. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA5-amd64-disc1.iso (701MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA5-i386-disc1.iso (564MB, SHA256).

FreeBSD 9.2, the latest update in the stable 9 branch, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE. This is the second release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: The ZFS file system now supports TRIM when used on solid state drives; the virtio(4) drivers have been added to the GENERIC kernel configuration for amd64 and i386 architectures; the ZFS file system now supports lz4 compression; OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8y; DTrace hooks have been enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel; DTrace has been updated to version 1.9.0; Sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.7; OpenSSH has been updated to version 6.2p2; import unmapped I/O support from head/." See the release announcement and release notes for more information. Download: FreeBSD-9.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,436MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,272MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the fourth alpha release of FreeBSD 10: "The fourth alpha build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Note: due to build issues within the head/ branch, alpha 3 ISO builds were skipped. Changes between -ALPHA2 and -ALPHA4 include: update OFED to Linux 3.7 and update Mellanox drivers; add driver for the PAPR VSCSI virtual SCSI controller; disable ISC BIND build by default and enable LDNS/unbound; correct a NULL pointer deference in nslookup and nsupdate; update the CAM version to 18, this includes compatibility shims to the previous version; introduce a kern.geom.notaste sysctl that can be used to temporarily disable GEOM tasting to avoid the 'bouncing GEOM' problem where, when you shut down the consumer of a provider which can be viewed in multiple ways; update OpenSSH to 6.3p1...." See the release announcement for a list of changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA4-amd64-disc1.iso (705MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA4-i386-disc1.iso (569MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second alpha release of FreeBSD 10, just days after the initial alpha build: "The second ALPHA build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. The 10.0-ALPHA2 builds are based on svn revision r255659 of the head/ branch. Important note to freebsd-update users: freebsd-update is not a supported upgrade path for the 10.0-ALPHA builds. Changes between -ALPHA1 and -ALPHA2 include: add -stdlib=libstdc++ to CXXFLAGS when building libstdc++ and libsupc++ with clang; fix an issue that caused Integrated RAID volumes on LSI mps(4) controllers to not get scanned on boot; fix a panic during pageout observed on some powerpc64 systems; import Hyper-V paravirtualized drivers from projects/hyperv branch...." Here is the full release announcement. Download links to the amd64 and i386 installation images: FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA2-amd64-disc1.iso (736MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA2-i386-disc1.iso (601MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the initial alpha release of FreeBSD 10, the upcoming major update currently scheduled for release on 24 November 2013: "The first alpha build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc and sparc64 architectures." Disappointingly, the release announcement provides no information about the planned features and improvements that are likely to be present in the new release, but here are a couple of other useful links: release notes (last updated nearly three months ago) and What's New on the FreeBSD wiki. The latter resource provides a list of changes, such as: "GCC is no longer built as part of the base system; Raspberry Pi support; support for AMD GPUs kernel modesetting...." The introduction of "bhyve", the BSD Hypervisor developed from scratch to offer a light-weight low-level HVM virtualization on FreeBSD, is another noteworthy feature. Quick links to download the amd64 and i386 installation images: FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA1-amd64-disc1.iso (728MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.0-ALPHA1-i386-disc1.iso (597MB, SHA256).

Development work on FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE continues with the latest release candidate as announced by Glen Barber earlier today: "The fourth release candidate builds of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle are now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures. This is expected to be the final release candidate for the 9.2-RELEASE cycle. Changes between -RC3 and -RC4 include: revert the tribute boot loader logo as the default logo; fix a file system bug that would cause removed files to fail to dereference vnodes until the file system was forcibly unmounted and remounted; fix a rtadvd(8) segmentation fault on service reload; create and correct ownership and permissions of /var/authpf in the standard mtree; fix a NFS deadlock; stop SIOCSIFADDR, SIOCSIFBRDADDR, SIOCSIFDSTADDR and SIOCSIFNETMASK at the socket layer rather than pass them on to the link layer without validation or credential checks...." Download: FreeBSD-9.2-RC4-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,435MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-RC4-i386-dvd1.iso (985MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third (and likely final) release candidate for FreeBSD 9.2: "The third release candidate builds of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle are now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures. This is expected to be the final release candidate for the 9.2-RELEASE cycle. Changes between -RC2 and -RC3 include: fix an integer overflow in computing the size of a temporary buffer which can result in a buffer which is too small for the requested operation; revert fixes and improvements to sendfile(2), which uncovered a bug in the NFS implementation that in turn can cause deadlocks; default net.inet.tcp.experimental.initcwnd10 to off." See the release announcement for further information and upgrade instructions. Download links for the amd64 and i386 architectures: FreeBSD-9.2-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,112MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (985MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the second release candidate of the FreeBSD 9.2 release cycle: "Changes between -RC1 and -RC2 include: Fix a boot issue caused by some GPT partitioning tools; Fix a regression that caused some PCI disk controllers disappearing during boot; Fix the FTP path used to fetch distribution packages when installing from the bootonly.iso; Fix a regression in sendmail that caused problems between the resolver and Microsoft DNS servers with AAAA lookups; Disable MSIs with Adaptec 2230S and 2820SA (aac(4)); Update FTP mirror list used by bsdinstall(8) and bsdconfig(8); Fix panics caused by early interrupts in igb(4); Fix panics when downing or unloading the mlx(4) driver." Read the full release announcement for full information. Download: FreeBSD-9.2-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (698MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (578MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the first release candidate build for the FreeBSD 9.2 release cycle: "The first release candidate builds of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle are now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -BETA2 and -RC1 include: Expand the list of devices claimed by cxgbe(4); Fix a panic in the racct code when munlock(2) is called with incorrect values; Remove ctl(4) from GENERIC. ctladm(8) now automatically loads the corresponding module as necessary - This reduces the default memory footprint and allows FreeBSD to work on i386 machines with 128 MB of RAM out of the box; Fix zfs send -D hang after processing requiring a CTRL+C to interrupt." Read the full release announcement for further information including source based or binary upgrade. Download: FreeBSD-9.2-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (697MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (579MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second beta build of FreeBSD 9.2: "The second beta build of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -BETA1 and -BETA2 include: fix an interoperability problem between FreeBSD NFS Server (version 4) and Linux NFS (version 4) clients; fix nvme(4) and nvd(4) to support non 512-byte sector sizes; Fix freebsd-update(8) for -BETA2 by removing a file with non-POSIX characters in its name, this file is not needed for FreeBSD builds, and caused freebsd-update(8) to error on -BETA1; fix an XHCI regression; fix a bug in ipv6_prefix_I; fix address range specification with various ifconfig(8) options.; fix denial of service vulnerability in named(8)." Read the full release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-9.2-BETA2-amd64-disc1.iso (699MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (579MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the initial beta build of FreeBSD 9.2 which, according to the release schedule, should become the new stable release on 31 August 2013: "The first beta build of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, and ia64 architectures. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal GNATS PR system or here on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system use "stable/9". Please be aware that cvsup and CVS are both deprecated, and are not supported methods of updating the src/ tree. Important note to freebsd-update(8) users - due to a last-minute problem found in the 9.2-BETA1 freebsd-update(8) builds, freebsd-update(8) is NOT supported for 9.2-BETA1 upgrades. Please do not use freebsd-update(8) to upgrade to 9.2-BETA1." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-9.2-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (700MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (580MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the release of FreeBSD 8.4, the new production release of the project's legacy 8.x branch: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE. This is the fifth release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.3 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: GNOME version 2.32.1, KDE version 4.10.1; feature flags 5,000 version of the ZFS filesystem; support for all shipping LSI storage controllers. FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE is now available for the amd64 and i386 architectures. Images for the pc98 architecture should be available within the next 24 hours. FreeBSD 8.4 can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download links: FreeBSD-8.4-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,626MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.4-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,323MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 8.4, the upcoming new stable version of the project's legacy branch: "The second RC build of the 8.4-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, and pc98 architectures. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal GNATS PR system or here on the 'stable' mailing list. If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system use 'releng/8.4'. If you would like to use csup/cvsup mechanisms instead the branch tag to use is 'RELENG_8_4'. Please be aware that cvsup and CVS are both deprecated, and while upgrades using CVS or cvsup may work now they will not be supported for security updates through the life of 8.4." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-8.4-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,626MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.4-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,147MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 8.4, the upcoming new stable version of the project's legacy branch: "The first RC build of the 8.4-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, and pc98 architectures. If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system use 'releng/8.4'. If you would like to use csup/cvsup mechanisms instead the branch tag to use is 'RELENG_8_4'. Important notice when upgrading from 8.4-BETA1 to 8.4-RC1: there was an accidental breakage in the OpenSSL ABI in the BETA1 build that was fixed before this RC build. Applications built against OpenSSL may need to be rebuilt after upgrading to 8.4-RC1 from 8.4-BETA1." Read the rest of the release announcement for upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-8.4-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,641MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.4-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,161MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first beta build of FreeBSD 8.4, in the project's legacy branch: "The first BETA build of the 8.4-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, and pc98 architectures. Since the stable/8 branch is relatively mature we hope there will only be one BETA build for this release cycle. If testing does not turn up any show-stopper caliber problems the next test build will be RC1. The following known issues are present in 8.4-BETA1: due to a change in sshd, sshd does not look for authorized_keys2 in addition to authorized_keys, this will be fixed prior the next release; selecting 'All' on the 'Choose Distributions' screen attempts to install a DEBUG kernel which is not present in the image so the installation will fail." Read the rest of the release announcement which includes update instructions. Download: FreeBSD-8.4-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (720MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.4-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (601MB, SHA256).

FreeBSD 9.1 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: new Intel GPU driver with GEM/KMS support; netmap(4) fast userspace packet I/O framework; ZFS improvements from Illumos project; CAM Target Layer, a disk and processor device emulation subsystem; optional new C++11 stack including LLVM libc++ and libcxxrt; jail devfs, nullfs, zfs mounting and configuration file support; POSIX2008 extended locale support, including compatibility with Darwin extensions; oce(4) driver for Emulex OneConnect 10Gbit Ethernet card...." Read the release announcement for highlights and the release notes for a detailed description of new features. Download: FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,407MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,551MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the third release candidate for FreeBSD 9.1: "The third release candidate of the 9.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. This is expected to be the last release candidate. Unless a majorshow-stopper is discovered within the next few days the final release builds will be started. If you notice any problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the -stable mailing list. If you want to do a source-based update to an existing system using SVN the branch to use is releng/9.1. If you would like to use CVS instead use RELENG_9_1." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions. Quick download links for the i386 and amd64 architectures: FreeBSD-9.1-RC3-i386-disc1.iso (572MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.1-RC3-amd64-disc1.iso (686MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 9.1: "The second release candidate of the 9.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and powerpc64. A third RC build has been decided on, currently scheduled for a week from now. The release builds themselves will begin about a week after RC3. There was enough 'community push-back' from the decision to not export the 9.1 release branch activity to CVS that the decision has been reversed. A firm decision has been made that 10.X release activity will not be exported to CVS. It hasn't been decided yet if the upcoming 8.X and/or 9.X (past 9.1) release activity will be exported. More information about that will get posted as decisions get made." Read the full release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-9.1-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (571MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.1-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (685MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 9.1: "The first release candidate of the 9.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for amd64, i386 and powerpc64. Current plans are for there to be one more RC build, followed by the release itself. If you notice any problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the 'stable' mailing list. With both the doc and ports repositories now moved to SVN it has been decided to not export the 9.1 release branch activity to CVS. So csup/cvsup update mechanisms are not available for updating to 9.1-RC1. If you would like to use SVN the branch to use is releng/9.1. The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-9.1-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (524MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.1-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (637MB, SHA256).

Although a bit behind the schedule, Ken Smith today announced the first beta version of FreeBSD 9.1, the upcoming release of the project's stable branch: "The first test build of the 9.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for amd64, i386, powerpc64, and sparc64. We hope this will be the only BETA build, to be followed by two Release Candidate builds and then the release itself. If you notice any problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or here on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use csup/cvsup mechanisms to do a source-based update of an existing system the branch tag to use is 'RELENG_9'. If you would like to use SVN instead use 'stable/9'. Note that if you do an update that way the system will call itself '9.1-PRERELEASE'." Check the full release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-9.1-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (523MB, MD5), FreeBSD-9.1-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (637MB, MD5).

FreeBSD 8.3 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.2 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: usb(4) now supports the USB packet filter; TCP/IP stack now supports the mod_cc(9) pluggable congestion control framework; graid(8) GEOM class added to support various BIOS-based software RAID controllers (replacement for ataraid(4)); ZFS subsystem updated to SPA version 28; GNOME version 2.32.1, KDE version 4.7.4. FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures." For further details please see the release announcement and the detailed release notes. Quick download links for the i386 and amd64 architectures: FreeBSD-8.3-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,211MB, SHA256, torrent), FreeBSD-8.3-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,347MB, SHA256, torrent).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second and (most likely) final release candidate for FreeBSD 8.3, an upcoming stable release the project's legacy branch: "The second release candidate build of the 8.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. What will likely be the package sets for the upcoming release have been placed on the RC2 images. For the disc1 images due to size issues only the English documentation package is available. The 'memstick' images include the documentation packages for all languages but no other packages. The DVD images include all of the documentation packages as well as enough packages to set up a basic graphical workstation. Unless a show-stopper caliber problem is found this will be the last test build of the 8.3-RELEASE cycle." The release announcement. Download links for the i386 and amd64 DVD images: FreeBSD-8.3-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,211MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.3-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,347MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 8.3, the project's legacy stable branch: "The first release candidate build of the 8.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, and pc98 architectures. We hope to have one more release candidate build, followed by the release itself. If you notice any problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or here on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use csup/cvsup mechanisms to do a source-based update of an existing system the branch tag to use is now 'RELENG_8_3'. If you would like to use SVN instead use 'releng/8.3'. As part of preparing for RC1 'releng/8.3' was branched. The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases." Here is the full release announcement. Quick links to download the installation DVD images for the two most popular architectures: FreeBSD-8.3-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (892MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.3-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,009MB, SHA256).

The legacy production branch of FreeBSD, version 8, is receiving one more update - to version 8.3. The first beta build is now ready for testing: "The first beta build of the 8.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, and pc98 architectures. Since the stable/8 branch is relatively mature we hope there will only be one BETA build for this release cycle. If testing does not turn up any show-stopper caliber problems the next test build will be RC1. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or here on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use csup/cvsup mechanisms to do a source-based update of an existing system the branch tag to use is 'RELENG_8'. If you would like to use SVN instead use 'stable/8'. Read the rest of the release announcement for more info and update instructions. Download: FreeBSD-8.3-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (886MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.3-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,003MB, SHA256).

The FreeBSD Engineering Team has announced the release of FreeBSD 9.0, a major new version of the BSD operating featuring a brand-new system installer: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on stable/8 and adds many new features. Some of the highlights: a new installer, bsdinstall(8) has been added and is the installer used by the ISO images provided as part of this release; the Fast file system now supports softupdates journaling; ZFS updated to version 28; updated ATA/SATA drivers support AHCI, moved into updated CAM framework; Highly Available Storage (HAST) framework; kernel support for Capsicum Capability Mode, an experimental set of features for sandboxing support; user-level DTrace...." Read the release announcement for highlights and the release notes for a detailed description of new features. Download: FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,140MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,278MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the third release candidate for FreeBSD 9.0: "The third and what should be final release candidate build for the 9.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available. This should be the last of the test builds. We hope to begin the final release builds in about a week. The 9.0-RELEASE cycle will be tracked here. The location of the FTP install tree and ISO images is the same as it has been for BETA2, BETA3, RC1 and RC2. The layout to a large degree is being dictated by the new build infrastructure and installer. But it's not particularly well-suited to humans so I've added a shorter pathway to the ISO images. Unless there are lots of complaints about the layout we'll stick with this for the release." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and notes about upgrading from a previous release. Download: FreeBSD-9.0-RC3-i386-disc1.iso (502MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.0-RC3-amd64-disc1.iso (612MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 9.0: "The second of the release candidate builds for the 9.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available." According to the FreeBSD 9.0 release engineering page, this will be followed by one more release candidate before the final build which is currently scheduled for 7 December. The release announcement has more details, plus important notes on upgrading from previous a version: "The FreeBSD kernel, which previously could appear in either /boot/kernel or /boot/GENERIC, now only appears as /boot/kernel. As a result, any kernel appearing in /boot/GENERIC will be deleted. Please carefully read the output printed by freebsd-update and confirm that an updated kernel will be placed into /boot/kernel before proceeding beyond this point." Download the i386 and amd64 installation ISO images from here: FreeBSD-9.0-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (502MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.0-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (612MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the delayed release candidate one for FreeBSD 9.0. According to the release schedule, it will be followed by two more release candidates before the final build on 13 November. From the release announcement: "The first of the Release Candidate builds of the 9.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Wrapping up RC1 was a bit delayed due to a bug found during the initial testing of the RC1 images and a few glitches that came up as part of making FreeBSD-Update available. We'll update the schedule soon." See the above-mentioned announcement for detailed upgrade information. Quick download links for the i386 and amd64 installation ISO images: FreeBSD-9.0-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (499MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.0-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (608MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the third beta release of FreeBSD 9.0: "The third beta build of the 9.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available. The 9.0-RELEASE cycle will be tracked here though the schedule listed there is still way off. We'll re-work the schedule some time soon. The location of the FTP install tree and ISO images is the same as it was for BETA2, though we are still deciding if this will be the layout we switch to for the release. At this point FreeBSD Update is still not available, in part to help encourage testing the installer. We hope to start the release candidate phase of the release cycle with the next test build." Here is the brief release announcement as published on one of the project's mailing lists. Download links for the i386 and amd64 installation ISO images: FreeBSD-9.0-BETA3-i386-dvd1.iso (500MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.0-BETA3-amd64-dvd1.iso (610MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second beta of FreeBSD 9.0, more than a month later than planned: "The second beta build of the 9.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Note: the location of the FTP install tree and ISOs have changed slightly. What we used for BETA2 reflects a directory structure that would let us fully utilize building and distributing a wider variety of architectures. The new layout does add some extra complexity, so we're actively discussing whether or not to change the layout from previous releases, and if we do change it whether or not to change it this much. What's there now can be viewed as an almost 'worst-case' scenario. It's entirely possible we'll back off and revert to the old layout despite that layout potentially limiting." There is much more information in the release announcement, including notes on what to test. Download links for the i386 and amd64 ISO images: FreeBSD-9.0-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (498MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.0-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (607MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 9.0: "The first beta build of the 9.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Due to lack of support for boot floppies and issues with the new ATA_CAM infrastructure the pc98 architecture is being dropped to Tier-2 status. Note that some time between now and beta 2 we will finalize the list of shared libraries that need to have their versions bumped (only a subset of libraries have been converted to symbol-versioning) and take care of doing the bumps. So at the moment packages built for current should work. But when the bump happens you will need to recompile any applications you have installed and there will likely be a delay for suitable pre-built packages to become available on the FTP sites." The release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-9.0-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (498MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.0-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (607MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the release of FreeBSD 8.2: "The FreeBSD release engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: Xen HVM support in FreeBSD/amd64 and Xen PV support in FreeBSD/i386 improved; ZFS on-disk format updated to version 15; aesni driver for Intel AESNI crypto instruction set; BIND and OpenSSL updates; GNOME updated to 2.32.1; KDE updated to 4.5.5; many miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information; there is also an errata page with a late-breaking news about an OpenSSL issue. Download the installation DVD images for the i386 and amd64 architectures from here: FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso.xz (1,971MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso.xz (2,033MB, SHA256). FreeBSD 7.4, a new update to the project's legacy branch, is also available.

The third release candidates for FreeBSD 8.2 (production branch) and 7.4 (legacy production branch) have been released: "The third release candidate for the 8.2/7.4 release cycle is now available. For 8.2-RC3 the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, powerpc and sparc64 architectures are available. For 7.4-RC3 the amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures are available. An initial set of pre-built packages are available on the 8.2-RC3 DVD images for both amd64 and i386. At this point we do not know of any issues large enough to hold up the release. Unless further testing uncovers such an issue the release should happen in a week or so." The release announcement contains links to to-do pages and upgrade instructions. Quick download links for the i386 and amd64 architectures: FreeBSD-8.2-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso.xz (1,971MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.2-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso.xz (2,033MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.4-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (1,644MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.4-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (2,029MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.4, the latest update of the project's "production legacy" branch: "The second release candidate for the FreeBSD 7.4 release cycle is now available. An initial set of pre-build packages are available on the DVD and CD-ROM images for the amd64 architecture. At the time the i386 images were created the two large meta-packages that are the bulk of what we normally provide (GNOME and KDE) were not available so there are some packages on the i386 images but what is there is not a reflection of what we expect to include with the final release. Several bugs we feel are critical enough to warrant fixing before the 8.2/7.4 releases are finalized, so the release will be delayed and we will be providing a third release candidate about a week from now." The release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-7.4-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,145MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.4-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (2,029MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced that the second release candidate for FreeBSD 8.2 is available and ready for testing: "The second release candidate for the FreeBSD 8.2 release cycle is now available. Initial testing of the 7.4-RC2 install images turned up an issue with the pre-built packages that will take a few more days to address. For this build only the amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures are available. An initial set of pre-built packages are available on the DVD images for the amd64 and i386 architectures. Due to a limitation in the mechanism used in some of our FTP mirror site infrastructure we are still limited to a 2 GB maximum file size (we hope that issue will be addressed before the next release), the package set on the DVD image is a bit sparse - basically just the GNOME and KDE meta-packages. The images are also compressed using xz to maximize the compression." Here is the full release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-8.2-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso.xz (1,873MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.2-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso.xz (2,033MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidates for FreeBSD 8.2 and 7.4: "The first release candidate for the FreeBSD 7.4/8.2 release cycle is now available. For 7.4-RC1 the amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures are available, for 8.2-RC1 those architectures plus ia64 and powerpc are available. Files suitable for creating installation media or doing FTP based installs through the network are available on the FreeBSD mirror sites. For this release candidate no packages (except for the doc package set for 8.2-RC1) have been provided in any of the images. If you are updating an already running machine the CVS branch tag for 8.2-RC1 is RELENG_8_2, for 7.4-RC1 it is RELENG_7_4. If you prefer SVN use 'releng/8.2' or 'releng/7.4'." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-8.2-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (861MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.2-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (973MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.4-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (967MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.4-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,063MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first beta releases of FreeBSD 8.2 and 7.4, new upcoming versions in the production (version 8) and legacy production (version 7) series: "The first of the test builds for the 8.2/7.4 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. Files suitable for creating installation media or doing FTP-based installs through the network should be on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. The ISO images for this build do not include packages other than the docs. For amd64 and i386 'memstick' images are available that can be copied to a USB 'memory stick' and used for installs on machines that support booting from that type of media." Read the rest of the release announcement for details on how to upgrade from previous versions and where to report bugs. Quick download links for the i386 and amd64 architectures: FreeBSD-8.2-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (861MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.2-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (973MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.4-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (967MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.4-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,063MB, SHA256).

FreeBSD 8.1 was formally announced after a few days of its appearance on world-wide mirrors: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: zfsloader added; zpool version of ZFS subsystem updated to version 14; NFSv4 ACL support in UFS and ZFS; support added to cp(1), find(1), getfacl(1), mv(1), and setfacl(1) utilities; UltraSPARC IV/IV+, SPARC64 V support; SMP support in PowerPC G5; BIND 9.6.2-P2; sendmail updated to 8.14.4; OpenSSH updated to 5.4p1; GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.5. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list." Read the full release announcement for further details. Download: FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (645MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso (682MB, SHA256). The released ISOs images are also available via BitTorrent.

The second release candidate for FreeBSD 8.1 is out and ready for final testing: "The second and most likely final release candidate for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures. There was a recent regression fix related to Atheros AR9280 cards being detected incorrectly, making them unusable. If you were having problems with a wireless card that had worked before not working with the earlier test builds; hopefully this will fix the problem. Testing of this fix would be appreciated. At this time DVD images are not available. There was a fairly serious security issue with the PNG graphics package. We will generate DVD images when the rebuilt packages become available, that will be announced when the images are ready." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-8.1-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (644MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.1-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (680MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 8.1: "The first release candidate for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures. Files suitable for creating installation media or doing FTP-based installs through the network should be available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. For the amd64 and i386 architectures the DVD images have a preliminary set of packages in the ISO files. Unfortunately due to some limitations of the FTP mirroring system we are limited to images no larger than 2 GB so the packages available on the installation media is limited (almost down to just GNOME/KDE). We will work to remove that limitation but that won't happen before 8.1 is to become available." Read the full release announcement for further details and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-8.1-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (1,900MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.1-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,971MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 8.1: "The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. Files suitable for creating installation media or doing FTP based installs through the network should be on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites by now. The ISO images for this build do not include packages other than the docs. For amd64 and i386 'memstick' images are also available that can be copied to a USB 'memory stick' (also called 'thumb drive') and used for installs on machines that support booting from that type of media. If you are updating an already running machine the CVS branch tag is RELENG_8, or if you prefer SVN use 'stable/8'." Read the full release announcement for further details and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-8.1-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (851MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.1-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (961MB, SHA256).

FreeBSD 7.3, the latest update of the project's older, legacy series, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.2 and introduces a few new features. There will be one more release from this branch to allow future improvements to be made available in the 7-STABLE branch but at this point most developers are focused on 8-STABLE. Some of the highlights: ZFS updated to version 13; new boot loader gptzfsboot supports GPT and ZFS; hwpmc enhancements; new mfiutil and mptutil tools for widely-used RAID controllers; NULL pointer vulnerability mitigation; BIND updated to 9.4-ESV; GNOME updated to 2.28.2, KDE to 4.3.5 and Perl to 5.10." See the release announcement and release notes for a complete list of new features. Download (torrents): FreeBSD-7.3-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,929MB, SHA256, torrent), FreeBSD-7.3-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (2,000MB, SHA256, torrent).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.3: "The third and what should be last of the test builds for the 7.3-RELEASE cycle, 7.3-RC2, is available for amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. The target schedule, as well as the current status of the release is available here. The schedule has slipped by a bit over a week so the actual target for the release announcement is really about a week and a half from now. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-stable mailing list. There are known issues with the Radeon video driver that have caused some people problems. The problems have been nebulous enough that we have decided to not hold up the release due to that specific issue." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional notes. Download: FreeBSD-7.3-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,927MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.3-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,998MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the release candidate of FreeBSD 7.3, a new version of the project's legacy branch: "The second of the test builds for the 7.3-RELEASE cycle, 7.3-RC1, is now available for amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. The schedule has slipped by about a week but so far it looks like we are on track for just having one more public test build (7.3-RC2) followed by the release itself. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-stable mailing list. There have been some significant changes to the ports that are not incorporated in this set of pre-built packages (e.g. the default version of Perl has been updated to 5.10). If you are using csup/cvsup methods to update an older system the branch tag to use is now RELENG_7_3. The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases." Here is the full release announcement with details on how to upgrade existing systems like FreeBSD 6.x and 7.x. Download: FreeBSD-7.3-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,931MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.3-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (2,001MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced that the first beta release of FreeBSD 7.3, a new version of the project's legacy branch, is now available for testing: "FreeBSD 7.3-BETA1, the first test build of the 7.3-RELEASE cycle, is now available for amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. For now we plan on BETA1 being followed by two release candidates, then the release itself. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-stable mailing list. For this BETA build no packages were included on any of the ISO images. An initial pass at providing packages will be done for the first release candidate. If you are using csup/cvsup methods to update an older system the branch tag to use is RELENG_7." Here is the full release announcement with details on how to upgrade existing systems. Download: FreeBSD-7.3-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (950MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-7.3-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,045MB, SHA256).

FreeBSD 8.0, a major new update of the popular operating system for servers, desktops and embedded devices, has been officially released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE. This release starts off the new 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.X and introduces many new features. Some of the highlights: Xen Dom-U, VirtualBox guest and host, hierarchal jails; NFSv3 GSSAPI support, experimental NFSv4 client and server; 802.11s D3.03 wireless mesh networking and Virtual Access Point support; ZFS no longer in experimental status; ground-up rewrite of USB, including USB target support; continued SMP scalability improvements in many areas, especially VFS; revised network link layer subsystem; experimental MIPS architecture support." Read the release announcement, release highlights and release notes for additional information. Download (torrents): 8.0-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,784MB, SHA256, torrent), 8.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,848MB, SHA256, torrent).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the third and final release candidate for FreeBSD 8.0: "The third and hopefully last of the release candidates for the FreeBSD 8.0 release cycle is now available. Unless something catastrophic comes up within the next couple of days we will begin the final builds for 8.0-RELEASE. There is one known issue with the igb(4) driver we are still deciding whether or not to fix it as part of 8.0-RELEASE versus doing an errata notice for it some time after the release is out. It has been patched in head, and the SVN commit for it is r199192. If any of you are able to give that patch a try on a machine with the igb(4) NIC it would be appreciated. ISO images for all supported architectures are available on the FTP sites, and a 'memory stick' image is available for amd64/i386 architectures." Here is the full release announcement. Download: 8.0-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,784MB, MD5), 8.0-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,848MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 8.0: "The second of the release candidates for the FreeBSD 8.0 release cycle is now available. At this point we feel most of what has been discovered during public testing that is feasible to fix as part of the release process has been addressed. So the current plan is to have 8.0-RC3 in about two weeks. ISO images for all supported architectures are available on the FTP sites, and a 'memory stick' image is available for amd64/i386 architectures. For amd64/i386 architectures the CD-ROM and memory stick images include the documentation packages but no other packages. The DVD image includes the packages that will probably be available on the official release media." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: 8.0-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,784MB, SHA256), 8.0-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,848MB, MD5).

The first release candidate for FreeBSD 8.0 is ready for testing: "The first of the release candidates for the FreeBSD 8.0 release cycle is now available. How many RCs we have will depend on how well 8.0-RC1 does. At the moment only one more RC is on the schedule but odds are fairly high we will wind up inserting at least one more RC. Between BETA4 and RC1 a lot of work has gone into IPv6 issues as well as many other issues that have been brought up from the public testing. And a patch set was committed by the people who handle porting ZFS to FreeBSD that they felt makes ZFS production-ready. There are two known problems with 8.0-RC1: local IPv6 link-local addresses are not reachable and the flowtable may direct packets to the wrong interface under certain routing conditions." Here is the full release announcement. Download: 8.0-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,776MB, SHA256), 8.0-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,841MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the fourth beta release of FreeBSD 8.0: "The fourth and most likely final BETA build for the FreeBSD 8.0 release cycle is now available. Since BETA3 many bugs that were identified from testing done so far were addressed. Some of the bigger issues were an mbuf leak along with work done in the general IPv6, jail, and USB subsystems. Issues in other areas have been addressed as well. Due to the issues identified in this early phase of testing, the schedule for release has been pushed back. The current target for the release itself is September 29th, with two RC builds between now and then. ISO images for all supported architectures are available on the FTP sites and a 'memory stick' images are available for the amd64 and i386 architectures." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional details. Download: 8.0-BETA4-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,773MB, SHA256), 8.0-BETA4-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,837MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the third beta release of FreeBSD 8.0: "The third of the BETA builds for the FreeBSD 8.0 release cycle is now available. All major work related to new features in 8.0 has been completed and we are shifting into 'bug-fix only' mode for the balance of the release cycle. Debugging features (e.g. WITNESS) are still enabled, but will be removed from stable/8 between now and RC1 so performance is still impacted a bit by that. Also note that, as mentioned previously on the mailing lists, we did do a shared library version bump after BETA2 was announced so if you update a system that was last rebuilt earlier than that it would be a good idea to rebuild all user-level applications including the ports/packages." Read the full release announcement for additional details. Download: 8.0-BETA3-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,773MB, SHA256), 8.0-BETA3-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,837MB, SHA256).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second beta release of FreeBSD 8.0: "BETA2 is still a little bit 'rough around the edges' and we still have various debugging tools enabled that cause the system to perform worse than it will when those debugging tools get disabled. We don't know of any issues that will 'eat your data' or anything like that so in that regard it's safe but we don't recommend it for production use quite yet. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-current mailing list. ISO images for all supported architectures are available on the FTP sites, and a memory stick image is available for amd64 and i386 architectures." Follow the complete release announcement for further details. Download: 8.0-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (822MB, MD5), 8.0-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (930MB, MD5).

Ken Smith announced the availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 8.0: "The first public test build of the FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE test cycle is now available, 8.0-BETA1. Through the next week or so more information about the release will be posted but here is the current target schedule for the other 'major events': BETA2 July 13, 2009; BETA3 July 20, 2009; RC1 July 27, 2009; RC2 August 17, 2009; RELEASE August 31, 2009. At this point it is not quite ready for production systems but mostly because there is still some ongoing work in a few areas that may cause some changes in things like ABI/API. Debugging supports (WITNESS, malloc debugging, etc.) are also still turned on and those tend to cause a performance hit. As far as we know there are no known issues that would cause data corruption or anything like that, just the issues with performance and potential for changes caused by ongoing work." Read the complete release announcement for further details. Download: 8.0-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (531MB, MD5), 8.0-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (636MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the release of FreeBSD 7.2: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: support for fully transparent use of superpages for application memory; support for multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for jails; csup(1) now supports CVSMode to fetch a complete CVS repository; GNOME updated to 2.26, KDE updated to 4.2.2; sparc64 now supports UltraSparc-III processors. FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures." Read the release announcement and release notes for a detailed list of changes. Download: 7.2-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,946MB, MD5, torrent), 7.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (2.009MB, MD5, torrent).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.2: "The second of the two planed release candidates for the 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. We believe, with the exception of the new bce(4) driver not working with lagg(4), all the major issues that have come up from the testing have been addressed. We will work with the vendor to get that issue addressed post-release. There is one known issue with 7.2-RC2. We switched from KDE3 to KDE4 and during my tests done before uploading the images, a problem with package dependencies for KDE4 was discovered. The kdemultimedia4 package has audio/lame as a runtime dependency but that package cannot be pre-built due to licensing issues. So the install of kdemultimedia4 fails if you choose to install kde4. The ports folks have been notified and will make the necessary adjustments before the final release." Read the complete release announcement for further details. Download: 7.2-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,928MB, MD5), 7.2-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (2,009MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 7.2: "The first of two planned release candidates for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of some of the recent work would be particularly appreciated. This includes: bce(4) updated (there is a report that lagg(4) does not work after the update, fixing that may need to be done as an errata notice after the release); testing of the threading libraries; amr(4) should be fixed. A fix for the 'vm_page_insert: page already inserted' panics has been committed to RELENG_7_1 this morning so it missed the 7.2-RC1 builds. If you wind up being hit by that you can try a normal source based update to the current state of RELENG_7_1 and that problem should go away." Read the complete release announcement for more details. Download: 7.2-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,814MB, MD5), 7.2-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,866MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced that the first beta release of FreeBSD 7.2 is now available for testing: "The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of two recent changes to the system would be particularly valuable. The bce(4) network driver was updated a few days ago. And some significant work was done on the threading libraries a short time ago that is known to fix several major issues but testing to see if it introduced any regressions would be appreciated. If you would like to do a source-based update to 7.2-BETA1 from an already installed machine you can update your tree to RELENG_7 using normal cvsup/csup methods. The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases." Read the rest of the release announcement for more update details and known issues. Download (MD5): 7.2-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,144MB), 7.2-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,235MB).

The first big release of the new year is FreeBSD 7.1: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: The ULE scheduler is now the default in GENERIC kernels for amd64 and i386 architectures; support for using DTrace inside the kernel has been imported from OpenSolaris; a new and much-improved NFS Lock Manager (NLM) client; boot loader changes allow, among other things, booting from USB devices and booting from GPT-labeled devices; the cpuset(2) system call and cpuset(1) command have been added, providing an API for thread to CPU binding and CPU resource grouping and assignment; KDE updated to 3.5.10, GNOME updated to 2.22.3; DVD-sized media for the amd64 and i386 architectures." See the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download (torrents): 7.1-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,808MB, MD5, torrent), 7.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,806MB, MD5, torrent).

Ken Smith has announced the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.1: "FreeBSD 7.1-RC2 is now available, the second of the release candidates. Unless an as yet undiscovered show-stopper comes along the release itself will be anywhere from a week to two weeks from now. We might be doing it next week since the release test cycle has gone on for quite a while now and the latest thing that delayed the release was a security advisory (SAs don't typically get or need much in the way of public testing). The traffic we're seeing on the lists and in Gnats is certainly stuff we'll pay attention to and deal with but isn't quite severe enough to warrant further delaying an already severely delayed release." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and update instructions. Download: 7.1-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,809MB, MD5), 7.1-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,807MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 7.1: "FreeBSD 7.1-RC1 is now available, the first of the release candidates. There will be at least one more release candidate before the release so the release itself is likely around three weeks from now - if no new show-stoppers are uncovered during testing. In addition to general testing, we're looking for information about potential problems with the boot loader. And a late arrival that's not possible to test without the packages, sysinstall's issues with excessive disc swapping when installing large sets of packages off the CDROMs should be fixed. Testing to make sure that's working would be appreciated." Read the release announcement for more known issues and binary/source upgrade instructions. Download: 7.1-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,808MB, MD5), 7.1-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,806MB, MD5).

FreeBSD 6.4, a new stable version of the project's legacy 6.x branch, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE. At this time 6.4-RELEASE is expected to be the last of the 6-STABLE releases. Some of the highlights: new and much-improved NFS Lock Manager (NLM) client; support for the Camellia cipher; boot loader changes allow, among other things, booting from USB devices and booting from GPT-labeled devices with GPT-enabled BIOSes; DVD install ISO images for amd64 and i386; KDE updated to 3.5.10, GNOME updated to 2.22.3; updates for BIND, Sendmail, OpenPAM, and other packages." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download (torrents): 6.4-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso.gz (1,738MB, MD5), 6.4-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso.gz (1,720MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 6.4: "The second release candidate for FreeBSD 6.4 is now available. FreeBSD 6.4-RC2 should be the last of the public test builds for the FreeBSD 6.4 release cycle. Unless a big show-stopper is found from this round of testing we should begin the 6.4-RELEASE builds in about a week and a half. We encourage you to test out 6.4-RC2 and report any problems by submitting PRs or via email to the freebsd-stable list. One of the things that could use some testing is the late-arriving patches to sysinstall that should eliminate the excessive disc swapping that previous releases had if things like GNOME or KDE were installed as part of the initial CD-ROM install." Read the full release announcement for more details. Download: 6.4-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (585MB, MD5), 6.4-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (650MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second beta release of FreeBSD 7.1: "As the next step in the release cycle for FreeBSD 7.1 builds for FreeBSD 7.1-BETA2 are now available for testing. The ISO images and FTP install trees are available on the FreeBSD mirror sites. The amd64 and i386 sets include a preliminary set of packages, not what is expected to be included with the release itself. The biggest change is that kde-lite was used this time, while the full kde3 will most likely be used for the release. If you would like to do a source-based update to 7.1-BETA2 from an already installed machine you can update your tree to RELENG_7 using normal cvsup/csup methods. The freebsd-update utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: 7.1-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (552MB, MD5), 7.1-BETA2-amd64-disc1.iso (547MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 6.4, the project's production legacy branch: "As the next step in the release of FreeBSD 6.4, the FreeBSD 6.4-RC1 builds are now available for testing. This is the first of an expected two release candidates. We encourage you to test out the release candidates, reporting any problems by submitting PRs or via email to the freebsd-stable list. If you would like to do a source-based update to 6.4-RC1 from an already installed machine you can update your tree to RELENG_6_4 using normal cvsup/csup methods. Note that as a somewhat inconvenient side-effect of the primary FreeBSD source repository now being in SVN the creation of the RELENG_6_4 branch in the CVS repository wound up checking in a 'new' version of every file, in some cases only changing the FBSDID." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: 6.4-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (580MB, MD5), 6.4-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (629MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the release of FreeBSD 7.1-BETA (production branch) and 6.4-BETA (production legacy branch): "The FreeBSD 7.1-BETA and 6.4-BETA builds are now available on the FreeBSD FTP mirror sites. This is the first step in the release process for FreeBSD-7.1 and FreeBSD-6.4. These sets of builds do not include pre-built packages. We encourage people to help out with the testing. Problems can be reported through Gnats or on the freebsd-stable at freebsd.org mailing lists. At this point we expect the 6.4-RC1 builds to start in about two weeks, and the 7.1-RC1 builds a week after that." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: 7.1-BETA-i386-disc1.iso (426MB, MD5), 7.1-BETA-amd64-disc1.iso (451MB, MD5), 6.4-BETA-i386-disc1.iso (536MB, MD5), 6.4-BETA-amd64-disc1.iso (617MB, MD5).

FreeBSD 7.0 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the 7-STABLE branch which introduces many new features along with many improvements to functionality present in the earlier branches. Some of the highlights: dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability shown by various database and other benchmarks; the ULE scheduler is vastly improved, providing improved performance and interactive response; experimental support for Sun's ZFS file system; gjournal can be used to set up journaled file systems, gvirstor can be used as a virtualized storage provider; read-only support for the XFS file system; the Unionfs file system has been fixed...." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download (FTP mirrors, torrents): 7.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (509MB, MD5), 7.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso (499MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the third release candidate for FreeBSD 7.0: "We're doing a 'mini-RC3' to encourage testing of the Highpoint driver (hptrr) backout. Testing of 7.0-RC2 showed there were problems with the driver update done between RC1 and RC2. Because it's a 'mini-RC' targeted at testing of one particular thing we have not bothered with setting up FreeBSD Update. You can use the normal cvsup-and-build method of doing an update for machines that are already up and running (branch tag RELENG_7_0) or install from scratch using the ISOs available on the FTP sites. If those who experienced problems related to the hptrr driver update could let us know one way or another whether or not you are still having problems with it that would be appreciated." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: 7.0-RC3-i386-disc1.iso (509MB, MD5), 7.0-RC3-amd64-disc1.iso (499MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.0: "The second Release Candidate for FreeBSD 7.0 is now available on most of the FTP mirror sites. Users of i386 or amd64 systems may wish to perform a binary upgrade to 7.0-RC2 using code recently added to the freebsd-update utility. On systems running 7.0-BETA4 or 7.0-RC1, the instructions for minor upgrades should be followed for this purpose; on systems running older releases or BETAs (including 7.0 BETAs prior to BETA4) the lengthier instructions for major upgrades should be followed. We sincerely hope this will be the last of the public tests for 7.0 and that the -RELEASE builds will start in about a week and a half. If bug(s) considered big enough to be show-stoppers are found we will of course reconsider but hopefully we're in good enough shape now to proceed with the release." Here is the full release announcement. Download: 7.0-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (510MB, MD5), 7.0-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (501MB, MD5).

FreeBSD 6.3 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.3. This release continues the development of the 6-STABLE branch providing performance and stability improvements, many bug fixes and new features. Some of the highlights: KDE updated to 3.5.8, GNOME updated to 2.20.1, X.Org updated to 7.3; BIND updated to 9.3.4; Sendmail updated to 8.14.2; lagg driver ported from OpenBSD / NetBSD; Unionfs file system re-implemented; freebsd-update now supports an upgrade command. FreeBSD 6.3 is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Junichiro Hagino for his visionary work on the IPv6 protocol and his many other contributions to the Internet and BSD communities." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download: 6.3-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (625MB, MD5), 6.3-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso (673MB, MD5). Also available via BitTorrent.

Ken Smith has announced the second release candidate for FreeBSD 6.3: "Sorry for the delay with this phase of the 6.3 release. A few glitches were found during testing of the 6.3-RC2 ISOs that included pre-built packages. The 6.3-RC2 builds for amd64 and i386 should now be available on the majority of the FreeBSD mirror sites. This is the last planned RC for 6.3. Unless a major show-stopper problem is found, the release of 6.3 should happen in about two weeks. If updating an older system using cvs or c[v]sup based mechanisms, the branch tag to use is RELENG_6_3. Or you can give FreeBSD Update a try, see the instructions here." More info in the release announcement. Download (MD5): 6.3-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (625MB), 6.3-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (673MB).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 7.0: "FreeBSD 7.0-RC1 available. The ports team has gotten the release package sets built for most of the architectures (sparc64 is still a long way off) so we have begun including the pre-built packages on the ISOs. Even a very basic post-build test turned up one latent bug in sysinstall, and once that was fixed a more extensive test (load both KDE and GNOME) turned up two more latent bugs. The 7.0-RC1 builds have one of the three bugs fixed in them. The other two bugs aren't fatal to installs on 7.0-RC1 and we have more 7.0-RCs coming so I went ahead with making 7.0-RC1 available as-is." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: 7.0-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (510MB, MD5), 7.0-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (501MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the fourth beta release of FreeBSD 7.0: "The 7.0-BETA4 builds are now available. If you would like to download an ISO image to install from they are available here. If you would like to use cvsup to update an older machine the branch tag to use is still RELENG_7. For users of FreeBSD Update due to some last-minute bumps in system libraries, installed third-party applications must be recompiled as per normal for a 'major' upgrade, even if upgrading from an earlier 7.0 BETA." Here is the brief release announcement. Download the installation CD images from here: 7.0-BETA4-i386-disc1.iso (385MB, MD5), 7.0-BETA4-amd64-disc1.iso (406MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the first release candidate for FreeBSD 6.3: "The first of the release candidate builds for FreeBSD 6.3 is now available. There is one more release candidate planned, which will be followed by the release unless a major show-stopper issue crops up during testing. The release branch has been created so if you plan to use cvsup to update an already installed machine you should use the RELENG_6_3 branch. Or you can give FreeBSD Update a try, see the instructions here. The ports folks are getting very close to finishing up the release package builds for a couple of the architectures. I'm planning to fiddle a bit with figuring out the disc1 and disc2 package sets that we will be trying to provide as part of the final release." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5): 6.3-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (499MB, MD5), 6.3-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (580MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of FreeBSD 7.0-BETA2: "The 7.0-BETA2 builds have completed and are on many of the FreeBSD mirror sites. If you want to update an existing machine using cvsup, use RELENG_7 as the branch tag. Instructions on using FreeBSD Update to perform a binary upgrade from FreeBSD 6.x to 7.0-BETA2 will be provided via the freebsd-stable list when available." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: 7.0-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (638MB, MD5), 7.0-BETA2-amd64-disc1.iso (542MB, MD5). On a related note, the first beta build of FreeBSD 6.3 has also been released: "The 6.3-BETA1 builds got delayed a bit by a last minute MFC (Merged From -Current) causing some undesired ABI breakage. That has been fixed and the 6.3-BETA1 builds for amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 have completed."

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 7.0: "We have entered the final phases of the FreeBSD 7.0 Release cycle which also means the beginning of the FreeBSD-6.3 Release cycle. Because the people who support the ports for FreeBSD also need to go through a freeze cycle as part of releases we had decided to combine the two releases to try and minimize the impact on the ports maintainers. The 7.0-BETA1 builds have completed and are on many of the FreeBSD mirror sites. If you want to update an existing machine using cvsup use RELENG_7 as the branch tag. Instructions on using FreeBSD Update to perform a binary upgrade from FreeBSD 6.x to 7.0-BETA1 will be provided via the freebsd-stable list when available." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: 7.0-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (636MB, MD5), 7.0-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (539MB, MD5).

The FreeBSD project has announced the release of FreeBSD 6.2: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE. This release continues the development of the 6-STABLE branch providing performance and stability improvements, many bug fixes and new features. Some of the highlights: freebsd-update provides officially supported binary updates for security fixes and errata patches; experimental support for CAPP security event auditing; OpenBSM audit command line tool suite and library; KDE updated to 3.5.4, GNOME updated to 2.16.1; csup integrated cvsup client now included...." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download: 6.2-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (573MB, MD5), 6.2-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso (616MB, MD5).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate of FreeBSD 6.2: "Since RC1 we have been working out a few more bugs in device drivers, a few device drivers were updated, BIND was updated, and bugs in several other areas of the kernel have been worked out. We also wound up having hardware problems with the primary distribution machine that took some time to resolve. All problems we felt needed to be addressed before 6.2 could be released have been taken care of. Unless further testing turns up something new RC2, which is available now for downloading, will be the last of the Release Candidates and 6.2-RELEASE should be ready in about 2 weeks." Read the full release announcement for further information. Download (i386, MD5): 6.2-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (573MB), 6.2-RC2-i386-disc2.iso (639MB).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of FreeBSD 6.2-RC1: "We have now reached the Release Candidate stage of the FreeBSD 6.2 release cycle. A few significant problems had been discovered during the initial BETA testing and those issues should now be fixed. This is the first point packages have been included with the test builds and a few minor nits have been noticed already. In particular these are known problems which will be addressed before RC2: sysinstall tries to install the wrong package for Linux emulation on i386; if you install gnome2 off the distribution media it will fail to find packages for gmime and gmime-sharp; RC1 distribution media does not include the documentation tree." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download (MD5): 6.2-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (519MB), 6.2-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (562MB).

Ken Smith has announced the third beta release of FreeBSD 6.2: "BETA3 for the FreeBSD 6.2 release is now available on most of the FTP mirror sites. There have been a lot of fixes to many things since BETA2. The most important of the things that have been worked on is the driver for em(4). We are hoping people who had been reporting problems with em(4) can test what has been done. Both positive and negative feedback would be appreciated, if you had been experiencing problems that are now gone we would like to know. We are getting much closer to something that is release-able. Your help with the testing up to now has been appreciated, and continued testing would be appreciated even more." The release announcement. Download (i386, MD5): 6.2-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso (412MB), 6.2-BETA3-i386-disc2.iso (31MB).

Ken Smith has announced the first beta release of FreeBSD 6.2: "The first Beta build for the FreeBSD-6.2 Release Cycle is now available on most of the FTP mirror sites. If the release cycle goes as planned it is the first of two BETAs, which will be followed by two Release Candidates (RCs) and then the final release. A few things to note about BETA1: be aware that SA-06:21.gzip was released after the -BETA1 builds started; the install media provided for this BETA do not include any packages; the sparc64 build got started before an important bug fix was applied to auditctl(2); no BETA1 for the ia64 platform will be available; the build for Alpha is still in progress; FreeBSD Update, a binary security update tool, was recently imported into the FreeBSD base system." Read the full release announcement for further details. Download (i386, MD5): 6.2-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (687MB) and 6.2-BETA1-i386-disc2.iso (687MB).

Ken Smith has announced a new stable release of the FreeBSD 5.x series: "It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.5-RELEASE. Work done between the 5.4-RELEASE and this release has mostly been bug fixes. Some 'vendor supplied' software has also been updated, mostly due to security concerns (specifically BIND and sendmail). This is the last planned release on the 5-STABLE branch. The FreeBSD development community is currently focusing its efforts on the 6-STABLE and CURRENT codelines. No new major features are planned for the 5-STABLE branch, although minor updates and bug fixes may be merged at the discretion of individual developers." Read the release announcement and consult the release notes for more information. Download (i386, MD5): 5.5-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (511MB), 5.5-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso (579MB).

Ken Smith has announced the release of FreeBSD 5.5-RC1, the latest development build of the project's legacy stable series: "FreeBSD 5.5-RC1 is now available for testing. Things had been going well with the 5.5 BETAs up to the point we suspended making them so we could focus on the balance of the 6.1 release so we think 5.5 is pretty much ready to go. Unless big problems are reported with this RC we will start the 5.5 release builds this coming weekend and do the release early next week." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download the i386 ISO image from here (MD5): 5.5-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (511MB) and 5.5-RC1-i386-disc2.iso (415MB).

FreeBSD 6.1 has been released: "It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE. This release is the next step in the development of the 6.X branch, delivering several performance improvements, many bug fixes, and a few new features. These include: addition of a keyboard multiplexer - this allows USB and PS/2 keyboards to coexist without any special options at boot; many fixes for file system stability; automatic configuration for man Bluetooth devices, as well as automatic support for running WiFi access points; addition of drivers for new ethernet and SAS and SATA RAID controllers...." See the rest of the release announcement for full details. Download (i386, MD5): 6.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (505MB) and 6.1-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso (574MB); also available via BitTorrent.

Scott Long has announced the second release candidate of FreeBSD 6.1: "FreeBSD 6.1-RC2 is available for download. This is the last RC before the release. Please test it to make sure that there have been no regressions since the last RC, and to make sure that it there are no new problems with installation. Other than a few cosmetic tweaks, there will be no more changes before 6.1. The list of known issues: using UFS snapshots and quotas at the same time can cause system lockups; under rare and heavily loaded circumstances, there is a possibility to leak PTYs...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download (i386, MD5): 6.1-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (505MB), 6.1-RC2-i386-disc2.iso (575MB).

The first release candidate of FreeBSD 6.1 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.1-RC1. It is meant to be a refinement of the 6-STABLE, branch with few dramatic changes. A lot of bugfixes have been made, some drivers have been updated, and some areas have been tweaked for better performance, etc. but no large changes have been made to the basic architecture. This RC is late in coming due to many more bugs being fixed, as well as a keyboard multiplexer being added." Read the full release announcement for further details. Download (i386, MD5): 6.1-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (504MB) and 6.1-RC1-i386-disc2.iso (575MB).

New beta releases of both FreeBSD 6.1 and 5.5 were announced today: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.1-BETA4 and FreeBSD 5.5-BETA4. A couple of significant changes were made to 6.1-BETA4. First is a large set of fixes to the VFS layer and various filesystems that should significantly help performance under heavy load and also fix problems with forcefully unmounting these filesystems. The second large change is that sysinstall will now install both the GENERIC and SMP kernels and automatically select the appropriate one based on whether it detects one CPU in the system or multiple CPUs." Find more details in the release announcement. Download (i386, MD5): 6.1-BETA4-i386-disc1.iso (443MB), 6.1-BETA4-i386-disc2.iso (171MB).

The second beta releases of both the stable FreeBSD 6.x and legacy FreeBSD 5.x series are now available for testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.1-BETA2 and FreeBSD 5.5-BETA2. Both FreeBSD 6.1 and FreeBSD 5.5 are meant to be a refinement of their respective branches with few dramatic changes. A lot of bugfixes have been made, some drivers have been updated, and some areas have been tweaked for better performance, etc. but no large changes have been made to the basic architecture. The FreeBSD 5.5 Release is being done for people who are unable to make the jump to FreeBSD 6.X at this time." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details and known issues. Download (i386, MD5): 6.1-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (571MB), 6.1-BETA2-i386-disc2.iso (648MB).

The FreeBSD project has announced new beta versions of the stable FreeBSD 6 branch as well as the legacy FreeBSD 5.x series: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the beginning of both the FreeBSD 6.1 and FreeBSD 5.5 release cycles with the availability of FreeBSD 6.1-BETA1 and FreeBSD 5.5-BETA1. Both FreeBSD 6.1 and FreeBSD 5.5 are meant to be a refinement of their respective branches with few dramatic changes. A lot of bugfixes have been made, some drivers have been updated, and some areas have been tweaked for better performance, etc. but no large changes have been made to the basic architecture." Find more details in the release announcement. Download (i386, MD5): 6.1-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (568MB) and 6.1-BETA1-i386-disc2.iso (258MB).

It's official: FreeBSD 6.0 is here. "It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE. This release is the next step in delivering the high performance and enterprise features that have been under development in the FreeBSD 5.x series for that last several years. Some of the many changes since 5.4 include: significant performance improvements to the filesystem and direct disk access layers of the OS; expanded support for wireless networking adapters and new support for the WPA wireless security protocol; experimental support for the PowerPC platform." Read the complete release announcement and release notes for more information. Download (i386, MD5, SHA256): 6.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (552MB) and 6.0-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso (651MB).

The first release candidate of FreeBSD 6.0 has been released: "The release engineering team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0. We encourage everyone to help with testing so any final bugs can be identified and worked out. The following issues are known and will be fixed before the release: a late change in the aac(4) driver may result in the driver failing on some Dell systems; some systems with only USB keyboards might loose keyboard input; some laptops with certain IDE controllers may crash on bootup; the QEMU and VMWare packages are known to expose problems in the IDE CDROM driver during OS install...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download (i386, MD5, SHA256): 6.0-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (552MB), 6.0-RC1-i386-disc2.iso (651MB).

Beta testing of FreeBSD 6.0 continues: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA4. ISO images are available for i386, amd64, pc98, alpha, powerpc, and ia64 architectures. sparc64 is still in the process of being built and will be uploaded as soon as it is ready. We encourage people to help with testing so any final bugs can be identified and worked out." Read the rest of release announcement for further information. Download (i386, MD5): 6.0-BETA4-i386-disc1.iso (545MB) and 6.0-BETA4-i386-disc2.iso (633MB).

The third beta of FreeBSD 6.0 has been available from download servers since last week, but the release announcement was only published today: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA3. This BETA includes a full set of packages for amd64 and i386 architectures. Alpha has no packages, sparc64 has everything except for KDE and Gnome. The FTP install trees are available. We encourage people to help with testing so any final bugs can be identified and worked out." Download (i386, MD5): 6.0-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso (552MB) and 6.0-BETA3-i386-disc2.iso (652MB).

FreeBSD 6.0-BETA2 has just been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA2. Because suitable pre-build packages are not widely available (see the Known Issues section below) BETA2 only has disc1 and bootonly ISOs available, and there are no FTP install trees... If you have an older system you want to update using the normal CVS/cvsup source based upgrade the branch tag to use is RELENG_6 (though that will change for the Release Candidates later). Problem reports can be submitted using the send-pr(1) command." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download (i386, MD5): 6.0-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (450MB).

The FreeBSD 6 release cycle is now officially under way: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA1, which marks the beginning of the FreeBSD 6.0 release cycle. FreeBSD 6.0 will be a much less dramatic step from the FreeBSD 5 branch than the FreeBSD 5 branch was from FreeBSD 4. Much of the work that has gone into 6.0 development has focused on polishing and improving the work from 5.x. These changes include streamlining direct device access in the kernel, providing a multi-threaded SMP-safe UFS/VFS file system layer, implementing WPA and Host-AP 802.11 features, as well as countless bugfixes and device driver improvements." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download (i386, MD5): 6.0-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (447MB) and 6.0-BETA1-i386-disc2.iso (141MB).

FreeBSD 5.4 has been released: "The Release Engineering Team is happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD Stable development branch. Since FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE in November 2004 we have made many improvements in functionality, stability, performance, and device driver support for some hardware, as well as dealt with known security issues and made many bugfixes. FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE supports the i386, amd64, ia64, pc98, sparc64, and alpha architectures and can be installed directly over the net, using bootable media, or copied to a local NFS/FTP server." Find more information in the release announcement and release notes. Download (i386): 5.4-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (538MB) and 5.4-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso (640MB). BitTorrent seeds are also available.

The fourth release candidate of FreeBSD 5.4 is out: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC4, the fourth Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. This will be the last Release Candidate, unless a major problem is discovered as part of RC4 testing the final release will be made early next week. This RC contains fixes to all known major issues. We encourage people to help with testing so any final bugs can be identified and worked out. ... The packages being provided as part of RC4 are what is expected to come with the final release for the alpha, amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. There will be a few more adjustments made to the package set for ia64." Here is the complete release announcement. Download (i386): 5.4-RC4-i386-disc1.iso (538MB) and 5.4-RC4-i386-disc2.iso (640MB).

The third release candidate of FreeBSD 5.4 is now available: "Due to one major issue that crops up on large (4-processor) systems under heavy load that is still being debugged there will be at least one more RC added to the schedule. Timing for the extra RC and the new Release date has not been set yet... We encourage people to help with testing so any final bugs can be identified and worked out. At this point the only major problem has been the above mentioned issue..." Find more details in the release announcement. Download (i386): 5.4-RC3-i386-disc1.iso (538MB) and 5.4-RC3-i386-disc2.iso (640MB).

The second release candidate of FreeBSD 5.4 is now available for testing: "We encourage people to help with testing so any final bugs can be identified and worked out. At this point the only major problem has been reports of large server (4 processors or more) hanging under extreme load conditions (varied load of local processes like database and heavy network load). Details to help with debugging have been hard to obtain so if anyone is in a position to help with trying to reproduce this it would be appreciated." Find more details in the release announcement. Download (i386): 5.4-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (538MB) and 5.4-RC2-i386-disc2.iso (640MB).

The first release candidate of FreeBSD 5.4 is now available for testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC1, the first Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. Much effort has been put into fixing a wide variety of problems identified in FreeBSD 5.3. It is important to check the 'Known Issues' section below. In particular two strictly local security issues came up after the RC1 builds had completed and were made available to mirror sites but before this announcement. We encourage people to help with testing so any final bugs can be identified and worked out." Find more details in the release announcement. Download (i386): 5.4-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (537MB) and 5.4-RC1-i386-disc2.iso (624MB).

The first beta of FreeBSD 5.4 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-BETA1, which marks the beginning of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. This BETA1 release is in the same basic format as the Monthly Snapshots, for this BETA there are no packages on the CDs at all so the install of things like Perl from the installation media will fail. As with the Snapshots there is, however, a full ports tarball it offers to install and you can use that to install the ports (or just download the packages you want from the FTP mirror sites). The Release Candidates posted through the next few weeks will contain the package sets." Here is the full release announcement. Download (i386): 5.4-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (570MB).

FreeBSD 4.11 has been released: "The Release Engineering Team is happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD Legacy development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE in May 2004 we have made conservative updates to a number of software programs in the base system, dealt with known security issues, and made many bugfixes. FreeBSD 4.11 will become an 'Errata Branch'. In addition to security fixes other well-tested fixes to basic functionality will be committed to the RELENG_4_11 branch after the release." The announcement, release notes. Download (i386): 4.11-RELEASE-i386-disc1-gnome.iso (563MB), 4.11-RELEASE-i386-disc1-kde.iso (633MB), 4.11-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso (310MB).

The third release candidate of FreeBSD 4.11 is available: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.11-RC3. This will be the last Release Candidate for the FreeBSD 4.11 release unless a 'show-stopper' problem is found while testing RC3. ... It has been decided to provide two disc1 ISO images, one with the KDE windowing system packages on it and the other with the GNOME windowing system packages. They are named disc1-kde and disc1-gnome respectively. Other than which major windowing system is on them they are identical. Most users can choose one of the disc1 ISOs to download and install from. At this time disc1-gnome for Alpha is not available. It may be made available later this week." Here is the full release announcement. Download (i386): 4.11-RC3-i386-disc1-gnome.iso (563MB), 4.11-RC3-i386-disc1-kde.iso (633MB), 4.11-RC3-i386-disc2.iso (310MB).

The second release candidate of FreeBSD 4.11 is now available: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.11-RC2. This is the second of three scheduled release candidates. At the moment there are no known severe issues. However the Linux Emulation subsystem (mostly added as a package) has been completely updated based on Red Hat 8.0. We would appreciate people testing the Linux emulation support. In particular testing to see if Linux applications continue to behave correctly if the linux_* packages get installed while using sysinstall(8) during the initial installation of the machine. The package set for disc1 is still being decided on, what is on disc1 for this RC will most likely change before the release." Here is the full release announcement. Download (i386): 4.11-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (649MB) and 4.11-RC2-i386-disc2.iso (307MB).

FreeBSD's legacy branch is receiving another update - to version 4.11: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.11-RC1, which marks the beginning of the FreeBSD 4.11 Release Cycle. This will be the last of the FreeBSD 4.X releases. It is meant to give users a little more time to migrate to FreeBSD 5.X, providing some bug fixes as well as a few conservative updates to some of the core pieces of the system." Here is the complete release announcement. Download (i386): 4.11-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (648MB) and 4.11-RC1-i386-disc2.iso (305MB).

Four and a half years after 4-STABLE, the first production release of FreeBSD 5 is now available for your downloading pleasure: "It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE. This release marks a milestone in the FreeBSD 5.x series and the beginning of the 5-STABLE branch of releases. Some of the many changes since 5.2.1 include: a binary compatibility interface has been introduced for the i386 platform that allows running Microsoft Windows NDIS network drivers natively in the kernel; the network and socket subsystems are now multi-threaded and reentrant; the development environment has been updated to GCC 3.4.2, Binutils; 2.15, and GDB 6.1; the choices for graphical environments have been updated to include X.org 6.7, GNOME 2.6.2 and KDE 3.3.0." The announcement, release notes, hardware notes and installation instructions. Download (i386): 5.3-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (645MB) and 5.3-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso (620MB). BitTorrent trackers and ISO images for alpha, amd64, ia64, pc98 and sparc64 are also available.

The second release candidate of FreeBSD 5.3 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RC2. Two critical issues came up during RC1 testing and it is felt the fixes warrant one more RC so they receive widespread testing. If no more show-stopper problems are found this will be the last test release done before 5.3-RELEASE. Fixes and enhancements since RC1: A situation where processes being debugged using a debugger (e.g. gdb) could be left in an unkillable state has been fixed. A situation where a machine under severe network load could stop responding for periods of time due to SACK issues has been fixed." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: 5.3-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (645MB) and 5.3-RC2-i386-disc2.iso (625MB).

The delayed release candidate of FreeBSD 5.3 is out: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RC1. This will likely be the only Release Candidate before the final release of 5.3. Fixes and enhancements since BETA7: added support for nForce2, nForce3, and ICH3 sound chips; fixed LOR in the socket code; VM_KMEM_SIZE_MAX and VM_KMEM_SIZE_SCALE are now tunables; fixed security hole in syscons related to invalid coordinates; interface renaming events are now logged; PFIL_HOOKS are no longer an option and exist by default; fixed problem with threads sometimes ignoring signals; many fixes to gvinum; fix timecounting on sparc64 SMP...." The complete release announcement. Download: 5.3-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (644MB) and 5.3-RC1-i386-disc2.iso (624MB). The final release of FreeBSD 5.3 is scheduled for 25 October.

The seventh beta of FreeBSD 5.3 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA7. This is the seventh and final BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. Fixes and enhancements made since BETA6: fix timekeeping on sparc64 and alpha that would result in the day of the week being stored incorrectly in NVRAM; add support to the fxp driver for the ICH6 chipset; fix the panic on detach problem with USB hubs; import BIND 9.3.0, this completely replaces the old BIND 8.x nameserver in the base system; fix panic when allocating swap on a busy system; fix loader crash when using the 'lsdev' command...." The full release announcement. Download (i386): 5.3-BETA7-i386-disc1.iso (650MB) and 5.3-BETA7-i386-disc2.iso (620MB).

The sixth beta of FreeBSD 5.3 is now available for download and testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA6. This is the sixth BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. Fixes and Enhancements made since BETA5: many USB device updates; fix a panic when unloading the if_tap module; fix a lock order reversal in the network ioctl code; fix a panic with PF; fix large UID and GID handling in libarchive; the PFIL_HOOKS kernel option is now silently enabled by default; various locking fixes to the network stack; the net.inet.ip.check_interface sysctl is off by default now...." Read the rest of the release announcement. Download (i386): 5.3-BETA6-i386-disc1.iso (644MB) and 5.3-BETA6-i386-disc2.iso (603MB).

The fifth beta release of FreeBSD 5.3 is now available for download and testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA5. Fixes and enhancements made since BETA4: updated floppy device driver (testers trying out floppies on your systems would be appreciated); fix for panics on certain hardware during boot if no media in the CD-ROM drive; change to pf logging format to handle 64-bit time; many more scheduler fixes, we encourage testers to turn PREEMPTION on; many fixes to bpf locking; if_re locking added...." See the announcement for a complete list of changes. Download: 5.3-BETA5-i386-disc1.iso (657MB); also available via 5.3-BETA5-i386-disc2.iso (290MB).

Two days behind the schedule, the fourth beta of FreeBSD 5.3 is out: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA4. This is the fourth BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. Fixed and Enhancements made since BETA3: ATA works on sparc64 and ia64 again; better support for statically linked threaded programs in GDB; support for more Broadcom and Realtek-based NICs; fixes for MSDOS internationalization support; many fixes for ATA including speed fixes for ICH* chips, better error recovery, and better support for devices that respond as both master and slave...." More details in the announcement. Download (i386): 5.3-BETA4-i386-disc1.iso (628MB) and 5.3-BETA4-i386-disc2.iso (290MB).

The third beta of FreeBSD 5.3 is now available for download and testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA3. Fixes and Enhancements made since BETA2: MP-safe network stack is now enabled by default; add support for loadable modules on AMD64; miscellaneous ACPI fixes; miscellaneous fixes and enhancements to bsdtar; X server configuration has been removed from sysinstall, it is best done post-install; fix to maestro sound card driver; correct a denial-of-service vulnerability in zlib...." Read the full announcement for detailed information about the release. Download (i386): 5.3-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso (648MB) and 5.3-BETA3-i386-disc2.iso (307MB).

The second beta of FreeBSD 5.3 is now available for download and testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA2. This is the second BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. It is intended for early adopters and those wishing to help find and/or fix bugs. The 5.3 release cycle will continue with weekly BETA builds while bugs are being fixed and features finalized. The schedule is here. Be sure to check the 'known issues' below, there are known problems still being worked on at this time." Here is the announcement and changelog. Download: 5.3-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (648MB) and 5.3-BETA2-i386-disc2.iso (306MB).

The much awaited first stable production release of FreeBSD 5 is getting closer: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA1. This is the first BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. It is intended for early adopters and those wishing to help find and/or fix bugs. The 5.3 release cycle will continue with weekly BETA builds while bugs are being fixed and features finalized. Be sure to check the 'Known issues' below, there are known problems still being worked on at this time. Significant improvements in features, performance and stability have been made since FreeBSD 5.2.1 was released last February." Read the announcement and check out the release schedule for details. Download (i386): 5.3-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (648MB) and 5.3-BETA1-i386-disc2.iso (306MB).

Ever wonder exactly how FreeBSD differs from OpenBSD, or why Mac OS X is considered a BSD? ServerWatch overviews the four main BSD distributions and offer recommendations for both server and desktop based solutions: "The much talked about Linux camp contains a variety of distributions that include different utilities and tool sets. The same is true of the less frequently covered BSD camp. This article compares and contrasts the four main BSD variants... Three of these (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD) are totally free; the fourth (Mac OS X) is technically the core part of an operating system that most wouldn't even consider a BSD variant. To understand the differences between the various versions, let's briefly recap the history of BSD to understand how the different versions have developed." Read the article here.

Mad Penguin has published a step-by-step guide to installing FreeBSD 5. It assumes moderate experience with linux and leaves you with a fully updated FreeBSD system: "The first thing to understand about FreeBSD is that there are two lines of development. The -STABLE branch is marked with a 4.x version number and the most recent version is 4.10. It is well tested and very solid, but does not include the most recent technology. The -CURRENT branch, marked with a 5.x version, is the "unstable" branch. However, it is nicely stable at the moment and is coming along quite well. Most users should go with 5.x and these instructions are only valid for that tree." Read the full guide here.

FreeBSD 4.10 has been released: "I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE in October 2003 we have made conservative updates to a number of software programs in the base system, dealt with known security issues, and made many bugfixes. ... The current plans are for one more FreeBSD 4.X release which will be FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE. It is expected the upcoming FreeBSD 5.3 release will have reached the maturity level most users will be able to migrate to 5.X." For more information, please see the release announcement and the release notes. Download (i386): 4.10-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (618MB) and 4.10-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso (273MB).

This is the third, and probably the last release candidate of FreeBSD 4.10: "FreeBSD 4.10-RC3 is available. Changes from RC2 include a full package set for Alpha, fixes for the twe(4) driver under load, fixes for the twa drives not being seen by sysinstall, along with various other bug fixes. i386 ISO images are available now, alpha ISO images are uploading to ftp-master now and will be available shortly. We expected this to be the final RC before the full release at the end of this week. So please test this as much as possible and report any problems." The release announcement. Download: 4.10-RC3-i386-disc1.iso (649MB) and 4.10-RC3-i386-disc2.iso (271MB).

This is the second release candidate of FreeBSD 4.10: "FreeBSD 4.10-RC2 is available for download. There are only a few changes in this, but it does include the release package set, so please feel free to test things like KDE and Gnome. Due to some late issues that are cropping up, we will probably do an RC3 before the final release. One thing to note about RC2 is that the twe(4) driver appears to be buggy and might hang under heavy i/o load. I posted a candidate patch to fix this problem to stable at freebsd.org a little while ago." The full announcement. Download (i386): 4.10-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (649MB) and 4.10-RC2-i386-disc2.iso (272MB)

Following the recent inclusion of BSD distributions on DistroWatch, we are pleased to bring you our first BSD article - a review of the latest release of FreeBSD 5. In the first part of the story we will look at the history of BSD, compare BSD with Linux from a technical perspective, and talk about licensing considerations. The second part will bring you practical information about installing FreeBSD and its applications, followed by a handful of useful tweaks, and configuration examples of various aspects of the operating system. FreeBSD is a superb product. Even if you decide in the end that Linux serves your needs better, there is no reason not to enhance your experience with another open source UNIX and learn about many distinct qualities of the most popular BSD operating system in the process. Article by Robert Storey.

This is from the announcement about the release of FreeBSD 4.10-RC: "The first Release Candidate for 4.10 (both i386 and alpha) is available now on the FTP mirror sites. If you can give it a test drive and provide feedback about any issues we would greatly appreciate it. At this point we are not sure if there will be a need for a second RC build - it will depend on the feedback generated by this first RC." Read the rest of the announcement. Download: 4.10-RC-i386-disc1.iso (650MB) and 4.10-RC-i386-disc2.iso (271MB). ISO images for the alpha architecture are still in the process of being uploaded to FTP servers.

For those who missed yesterday's DistroWatch Weekly, BSD distributions have now been included in DistroWatch and will be monitored in the same fashion as Linux distributions. Here comes the first announcement - the release of FreeBSD 4.10-BETA on Sunday: "I'm pleased to announce the availability of 4.10-BETA for i386. 4.10-BETA for alpha will be following shortly as we work out some problems. 4.10 is the next step in the 4-STABLE branch, and as such contains primarily bug fixes and incremental functionality improvements. One significant new feature is the merging of the USB stack and drivers from 5.x. This should provide significantly better USB support from what previously existed in 4.x, and I ask everyone to test it out as much as possible in the BETA phase." Read the rest of the announcement. Download: 4.10-BETA-i386-disc1.iso (652MB) and 4.10-BETA-i386-disc2.iso (270MB).